Accounting for research and development (R&D) costs is an open issue. SFAS N°2 mandates that all R&D costs are immediately expensed. International standards prescribe a capitalization of R&D costs if they meet certain criteria (IAS 38). Recent research papers (Healy et al., 2002; Lev and...

We examine whether managers' decisions to capitalize or expense R&D expenditures convey information about the future performance of the firm. Focusing on a French setting where managers can choose to capitalize R&D expenditures under certain circumstances, we find that, after controlling for...